Tax Religions, Save Democracy

 Marcus Alden Meredith

October 23, 2021

Tax Religions, Save Democracy

Tax the churches, make schooling national, for the sake of democracy.

Republic do not fail from attacks from outside, they die due to failures from the inside. History is replete with such instances, just take your pick. The people of the state fracture into factions, the power of money and uncheck corruption put stress on the electorate, parties lose their higher callings, and religion forces its way into the body politic like a cancer. Religion a cancer? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. Religion and politics is an acid that eats away at both. the early fathers of religiously founded colonies in America such as Roger Williams in Rhode Island knew this and wrote as much in ways that when our Founding Fathers read this, they looked back on their experiences with religion and knew that church and state combined simply must not be allowed for both to be able to survive and flourish. But the 20th Century brought out religious leaders that denied this premise in order to satisfy their thirst for influence and power. They don’t care about democracy. Power, influence, domination in the realm of politics is the only coin of the realm for them (AND all that such power means for the individual leaders involved in such enterprises because let us not forget these men, and they are mostly men, are no different than other wanna-be potentates in their thirst for self-aggrandizement bordering on malignant narcissism). Democracy is at grave risk from religions. But how does a republic tackle such forces? I offer the following ideas.

First and foremost, in the United States at least, we are reminded that we have religious freedom. That is all well and good, but most people think of it as an unrestricted right to say anything and act any way in a religious context that you wish. No. While government is barred from the establishment of a state religion (a la Anglicanism in the UK with the Queen as the head of state and the church), we still have the power to TAX religions by a simple (legally simple) change in the tax code. No change in the Constitution is necessary, the legislative process will suffice. As late as August 2013, the Washington Post had an article demonstrating that at least  $83 billion would be raised from taking away the tax deductions and tax exemptions of churches in the U.S. (and that is undoubtedly a conservative estimate). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/22/you-give-religions-more-than-82-5-billion-a-year/  In that article it was estimated that $600 billion of property was in the hands of religions (and again this is in 2013 and probably very conservative in it’s estimations). If one is being bluntly, unambiguously, objective in their views on religions, you have to ask the question: “What do we get out of it?” Now by the “we” it is meant the collective, U.S. taxpayer, everyday citizen that is asking this question. The answer is pretty straight forward: nothing.

“Nothing?” You might ask. But what about all the charity they do? Well, that’s a question still open to examination at the least because concomitant with that is the question, “Religious charity at what price?” Just look at the way in which many evangelical leaders (just to start) live in comparison to the lives of their flocks. From any objective philosophically minded point-of-view, it is a fraud and a scam. And, any argument about the spiritual needs of the adherents is irrelevant to the point of the previously asked question: “What do we (the tax payer) get out of it?”Again, the answer is nothing. Your religious beliefs are yours, but they are personal, private and should be kept that way. When religions decide they are entitled to be in the public arena, to influence politics, to effect laws and the lives of non-adherents, in short, to put their beliefs ahead of the common good, they must be made to pay the price of such behaviors… pay taxes for the common good.

Now it will eventually come to pass that my personal motivations will be brought into question and so let’s address them here and now. I am an atheist, scientist, retired educator and a Zen-Stoic by philosophy and have not personal use for religions aside from appreciations of their ritual and the arts associated with them. I find most religion to be the bane of human existence and utterly contrary to the Enlightenment of the human species such that valuable time, effort, brain power, and resources are squandered on claptrap and nonsense. At the same time I do not see the human species capable of the complete abandonment of religions and from a very narrow perspective, perhaps their complete elimination would not be good or necessary. But the control of religions ability to control people is an imperative for the survival of democracy and, perhaps, humanity as well. And so, the most direct way to accomplish this goal, as I see things at the moment, is the elimination of all tax exclusions, benefits, and deductions for religions from any source of income. Deductions for charitable work (not including the ‘administrative’ costs) will be just fine so that the more a religious organization donates charitably the less they will be taxed. 

Now at this point, I brace myself for some lawyer to remind me that “the power to tax is the power to destroy” and that is true (as stated in the Federalist Papers) under a tyrannical government. But our government, of the the people, by the people, and for the people, is not what the Founding Fathers feared; the British Parliament was their foil for their contentions about taxation. And so I call, “B.S.!” on such arguments and again as the question “What do we get out of it?” So far, in the history of the U.S., we have not received our due share for offering such freedoms that churches, synagogues, and mosques have enjoyed historically since it can be said (accurately I believe) that the Government is the ONLY institution responsible to all the people and as such, the taxes it collects offer the best hope for the best use of resources for the most people… NOT RELIGIONS! For far too long, we have turned a blind eye to religions, their influences on society and politics in particular, and failed to take careful stock of the costs of such lax oversight of such human institutions by the secular state. That must change for the influences of religions to erode the 1st Amendment, for their anti-democratic stances on personal freedoms, and their over-sized influence on politicians and the body politic must be reigned in. Tax religion. Tax them all…

The other institutions that are at risk from religion are ones that are controlled locally, not nationally, and those are schools. It is because the Constitution does not state anything specifically about schools that it has historically been left put to the individual states to take care of such foundational endeavors in our society… and they have failed. The current “Seldon Crisis” for the United States shows clearly to an objective observer that leaving the States to tackle the necessities of a modern education is beyond any individual state’s ability to sufficiently finance the enterprise which is of vital import to the future of the nation economically, politically, and educationally. A national “plan” is again insufficient. The politico-religious forces are arrayed to thwart any attempts to do this… making all the more important that the process of education must be taken from the states and made national in scope and control. We need a Constitutional Amendment. If we are to be “one nation”, then our children must made national in scope, sequence, curriculum, credentials, financing, and control. There is no other workable alternative. 

I can hear it now: “But what about local control? How will we have any say in how our schools are run?” Well, my informed opinion after 33 years of teaching in the public school systems of California, is that “local control” is a red herring. The idea is that the schools would be more responsive to the needs of the communities that they served. In practical terms, this is a myth. Very few people are involved in the school boards of their local schools (with the exception of the occasional kerfuffle over some odd or end), and they are equally un-involved with the curriculum. The exceptions are almost always those with a religio-political agenda that they have devoted hours of demagoguery to in the hopes that their religious views will find sway and primacy in the curriculum. I can give a prime example in one word: evolution. Despite evolution being a fact, these servile minded, religiously zealous individuals tend to have a far too large of an influence on the workings of local school boards especially in the South and Midwest. Stated simply: this crap has to end. The only sure fire way is to take local control from the states, put it in the hands of educational professionals, make there be one curriculum under the flag of the United States. Local control needs to be abolished for the sake of the education of our children, for the sake of democracy, and for the sake of the country. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/29/school-board-meetings-used-be-boring-why-have-they-become-war-zones/)

I’m sure at this juncture that I will be labeled a whole myriad of epithets and labels. Bring it on. Two can fight that battle. The point of this essay is to point out the absolute necessity of changing the way we view, tolerate, allow, and administer religions and education and how we direct the goals of each. For far too long, religion has been allowed to be the cat that sat on the fence at night, crying and meowing us awake, ruining our sleep and peace of mind. Time to bring out the shotgun and shoot it.